406 BIRDS OF SOMERSETSHIRE. 
shot, it has been quietly sent into the larder with 
other Snipes, and no notice taken of it, except per- 
haps that it has been considered a remarkably fine 
Snipe when it has made its appearance at table—as 
Montagu says, “a fine large Snipe.’ A good many 
notices, however, of the occurrence of this bird in 
various parts of England appear from time to time 
in the ‘ Zoologist,’ a work which has done so much 
- for the Ornithology of the country. 
The Great Snipe does not frequent quite such 
moist and boggy situations as the Common Snipe, 
and this may perhaps be accounted for by the 
difference of food, as Yarrell says the food seems to 
be entirely the larvee of Tipule (‘‘ daddy long-legs ”’) 
or congenerous flies: Meyer, on the other hand, 
considers the food of both species to be much the 
same, namely, worms and insects, and he adds that, 
in many instances, caddis-worms with their curious 
cases are found in the stomach, and also many grains 
of sand; but, contrary to the practice of others of 
the tribe, this bird is said to cast these cases and 
other indigestible substances in long pellets.* I do 
not find that this peculiarity is noticed by Yarrell, 
but he says, quoting Sir Humphrey Davy, that 
“their stomach is the thinnest amongst birds of the 
Scolopax tribe,’ and this may be some reason for 
their rejecting these pellets when feeding on any 
* Meyer's ‘ British Birds,’ vol. v., p. 46. 
